eggbeater

Eater National: "How Hard Is it to Find Good Young Cooks?"

If you can look past the fact that the only chefs quoted in this piece on Eater National are male, you'll find that I'm not the only chef wondering where the cooks I remember working alongside 20 years ago, are today.

My personal favorite quotes:

Tony Maws, Craigie on Main, Boston:

"What we get now are these Gen Y kids that aren't used to receiving feedback that's even remotely negative. They're not necessarily the come early, stay late types. They don't understand that this is a craft. Who doesn't wish this was easier?"

"The other thing is that culinary schools aren't setting expectations. You basically don't need any experience to get into the CIA anymore. It used to be that you needed a year in a restaurant and things like that. Now they just want your money and don't bother to tell you that when you leave culinary school, you'll be lucky to make twenty-thousand dollars and won't be able to pay back your loans."

Matthew Accarrino, San Francisco's SPQR:

"When I started cooking, you used to stay at a place for two years. Then you left and went to another place for two years, and so on and so forth. Hell, when I was getting started, some chefs would tell me, "If you stay here less than a year then I'll blackball you." That never happens any more. The chivalry has been lost. Now every resumé that I get shows people that move around more than once a year. It's hard to really harness any kind of talent other than natural talent in a cook if they're not stable."

Stephen Wambach, Philly:

"In the States, it's all talk. Kids want to learn how to make a sphere of whatever before knowing how to make a proper red wine sauce. The problem is the executive chefs at the mid-range level are not leading and nurturing their cooks — there is no foundation, everyone just wants to be a superstar."

Sang Yoon, Father's Office LA/CA:

"It's not so much talent that you look for in young cooks. It's worth ethic — showing that you'll do whatever it takes — that is the key factor. I look for dedication and loyalty, since if I'm going to invest time in them, I want to be sure that they stick around, absorb the information, and want to move themselves up."

"There's more and more people to choose from now, but it's harder to weed through that number of applicants."

---

speaking of applicants, I'm looking for 1 solid pastry assistant at Peels. Just 1. You wouldn't think it would be so hard... email me your resume & cover letter if seriously interested.

Food52 Hones In On Custard Making, with me, at Peels {Pastrylandia}

A long standing aversion to being inside fast whizzing frames, aka TV & film, has recently been challenged, in the best possible way.

Amanda Hesser & Merrill Stubbs, the incredibly energetic, lively, smart, generous, silly, gorgeous women behind & inside Food52 entered the Peels pastry kitchen [aka Pastrylandia] and made a video of me making Butterscotch Pot de Creme.

But instead of airing one video of it all, they've broken it up into 5 parts!

Part 1 is all about Vanilla Sugar and in Part 2 I address how to achieve silky smooth voluptuous soft silken delicate custard. For Parts 3-5, keep connected to Food52's Video link.

 

NY 1, Rachel Wharton of Edible Manhattan & Shuna Lydon of Peels Restaurant

all in one neat package,

Edible: East Village Bakery Uses Sweet Elements Of Surprise

on TV,

for your viewing pleasure.

I must say, for the record, what an absolute pleasure and honor it was to work with Rachel Wharton! She is as smart and beautiful and funny and silly and lively and dynamic and down-to-earth as she appears here.

Coming from the Bay Area I had no preparation for the serious, thick, "glossy," thorough magazines that are Edible Manhattan & Edible Brooklyn. They're doing some fine work. Especially considering all that's going on food-wise in the little big apple.

enjoy.

 

James Beard House Valentine's Tea Sunday February 13, 2011

The Day before Valentine's Day proper, yes. My first time ever inside the James Beard House.  woot!

You might have seen me mention it on Twitter...

It's where I am today, along with Heather Bertinetti, Sara Jenkins, Jennifer McCoy, Meg Grace, Kiyomi Toda-Burke & Sandra Palmer. I am so so so excited to meet, and work among these amazing chefs!

Feel like you missed out because you didn't know about it in time? April 15, 2011. Save the date. Peels luncheon at the James Beard House. Be there or be perpendicular.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

professional cook blues.

One busy Saturday night service, many years ago, my station partner and I looked down the line, at one of the meat cooks, and knew something was amiss. There had been an exchange between him and our expediting sous chef that none of us were paying much attention to until our sous raised his voice and squelched that meat cook's words. My partner and I looked down the line and saw that cook just standing there. His knife bag was on his cutting board and he was looking at it.

This might not sound so odd, but in the final minutes before service begins and your ticket machine starts chinkity click clink clinking into it's sputter of endless tickets, time both condenses and elongates like nod sentences on slow motion. You can't stop moving, you can't stop doing,

you are never ready.

You never have time to stand stock still. And your knife bag is no where to be seen. You've been using your tools for hours and they won't find the dark resting place of that knife roll until well past the violet hour.

Service begins. We are at the ready to serve 500+ people 4 star food with 10 cooks on the line not including the expeditor. We have 3 dining rooms, six menus and there's no room for error.

We are about 45 minutes into service when this meat line cook says, "I gotta go."

The air leaves the kitchen and every cook freezes, for a nanosecond. None of us dare to look up. Our sous yells at the line cook. Screams. Rails. All front of house is concrete. Cooks keep cooking. Sous and Line Cook sit under a theater spot light and meat cooks gives in. He starts cooking again. We exhale. Carefully.

8 o'clock hits. The board is full. Captains, back waiters, 3 dishwashers, runners full throttle ahead.

And it's right about then I feel the air in the room shift. Tilt. Electricity ankle high. I am working two ovens, sauteeing and quenelling 25 ice creams my board is full my partner has plates out we're garnishing like mad I'm yelling for runners and plates are getting wiped as they're lifted off the pass

and

I see in my peripheral vision

that that meat cook has turned his back to his grill and is packing up his knives. He has long curly hair and it's obscuring his flattened face. He shows no emotion. He is a quiet artisan, slowly taking care of his tools. The rush of service, the cacaphony of kitchen, the orders barked and directed and a kitchen orchestrated is madness, all around him.

The sous says little. We dare not speak. We watch

in complete disbelief.

The line steps one step closer to stoves to let him pass when he walks out.

He walks out in the middle of service. On Saturday night. In one of New York's best, most popular restaurants.

The ticket machine doesn't notice. The diners don't give a shit. They want their four star food. Now.

It's surreal, and we all know. We all hope

that that is never us.

But what we don't know, what we don't want to believe, what we will fight tooth and nail to forget, to stay in denial with, to shelve, to subjugate, to keep at arms' length, or better yet-- as far away as we can, is that

One day that will be us.

      Sooner than we think.

There was a running joke in that kitchen ever after that night. When we were in the weeds, which was always, but right before service when our nerves were on high alert and we watched the clock banging out its last seconds before the ticket machine would go from sleeping to fourth gear, one of us might say, "I gotta go." laughing in that easy way you can never laugh like again

after it's you.

After it's the you that has got to go. No matter what the fuck is happing in the kitchen. No matter what your leaving does to your fellow cooks and chef and those clueless diners happily perusing the menu.

-----

We have a few pieces of advice concerning 'life outside the kitchen getting in the way of work/cooking" for cooks in this brutal business of professional cooking:

Leave it at the door.
Use your job to avoid your life.
Workaholism is the best forgetting drug.
You can cry, but you gotta keep working.
You can hide in the walk in, but you won't be alone.
There's no part-time in the kitchen.
If you can't come with 1000%, don't come at all.
Preoccupation causes bodily injury. To yourself and others.
Never call in sick unless you're dead.

--------

But what about when you can't leave it at the door?

What about the day I got a long distance call on the internal kitchen phone line at the French Laundry telling me one of my cousins died in a car crash that morning?

What about the day I worked lunch service shaking & hallucinating-- stone cold sober, because of an internal organ failure?

What about the day you bury the most important person in your life?

What about the day you come home to find your partner with someone else?

What about the day you wake up to terrorist attacks? And the days and weeks that follow waiting for word from people you know who were working in the Twin Towers that day? What about the day you get that phone call you didn't want to get, but knew you were going to, telling you that your worst fears were confirmed?

What about the day you hear from your beloved that she has an incurable illness?

What about the day you go home to find your husband gone & divorce papers on the kitchen table?

What about the day you find a lump in your breast?

What about the day you realize your addiction is, finally, something that needs to be addressed. Now. ?

What about the day you learn one of your best friends' has taken her own life?

What about the day you get a call from the school that your child has been hurt?

Then what?

Can you go into the the kitchen that day, that week, those months, and leave it at the door? Cry in the walk- in? Can you go into work and grill or saute or reduce stocks or brunoise meaningless cubes out of vegetables no one is ever going to taste, let alone see your perfect knife skills?

How do you go on?

How do you continue to care about, be inspired by, want to teach, be interested in learning, this exhausting craft, this hungry thirsty insatiable beast of an industry?

Those phone calls, those life altering moments, need to be seen to.

I took time off from cooking to help someone die. I took years off from getting into my chef's coat when I knew I could not give 1000%. I worked in catering when I could not give all of me to a restaurant. I worked in another industry altogether when my grief was so profound I could not sleep or eat or read or speak.

But there are more options than 2.

If you can work through the experience. If you can focus on one hour at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time, one service at a time, you can accumulate a few hours, a few days, a few months, working through the pain, the anguish.

When you can collect a few of life's breathtaking heartbreaks, and you can get through them, and get to the to the other side, where there is light, you collect hope. Hope doesn't go bad. It collects interest in your bank.

And every time you walk through the coals, you can remember that you once did, you twice did, that before.

Because cooking and baking are verbs, they heal as they work you. Working with your hands, seeing immediate results for your toils, heals. Being in a kitchen with other cooks, many of whom have had serious struggles of their own, humbles us and we can be carried by them, if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

Kitchen cooks are pirates. We are survivors even if we're not always the fittest. We romp and we meander. We're train jumpers and responsible citizens alike.

Show me someone in my uniform everyday who does not struggle with the craft, the industry, the grace. That person does not exist. You can use work to avoid life, yes, but what about when work is life? Managing life inside and outside of the kitchen is tricky business.

If there's one thing I know it's this. Cooking and baking and writing about it buoys me. Has set me on course even when I couldn't see land through tears. Has brought me back down to earth when I could see my body floating away from self.

But there are times in a cooks life when saying, "I gotta go." is what needs to be said. Only that cook can know when. And why.

I beg of you this, cooks with the blues, attempt to stick it out. Use the kitchen to heal yourself through the pain. Kitchens steady. Kitchens support. Kitchens weather. Kitchens give perspective, consistency. Kitchens heal.

two thousand ten.

culinary school changes the playing field. for all cooks.

In High School it became apparent to me I would not score as high as my friends on the SAT. Because I didn't have money. The test didn't cost any money. But the tutoring did. And the more money you {your parents, that is} paid, the higher your score.

You still had to pay for college, but that initial number increased your chances to get into the school of your choice. Or the choicest school.

I do poorly on tests like the SAT. It turned out I got into all the colleges I applied for. But not because I did well on the SAT. Because I was being judged as much on my skills as I was for my grades. No, maybe more. I applied with a portfolio. I applied with a craft, for a craft.

And crafts need to be practiced, for years, in order to gain proficiency.

Natural born talent helps, but even brilliance needs to be polished, honed, trained, exercised.

I think of culinary school the way I think of a vacation at Club Med. Never gonna happen for me. I've never had the money to live, even temporarily, in a walled environment. Must be nice. For those folks. Sounds abominable. Privilege breeds privilege. Wish I could relax like that for a spell. O I would take such advantage of such an opportunity!

It's confusing.

It's confusing that there's school for a craft. A craft learned over a lifetime. Everyone has to start somewhere, I reckon, but why does it cost so much money? What are those culinary students learning that I haven't/can't learn, just by working in kitchens and practicing this craft, every day?

And where, on the continuum of cooking, learning to cook, do those culinary students get propelled to, when they graduate? How many years did they "miss" by going to school?

Did culinary school give them a clear understanding of the demands this industry expects? To show up every day. Never call in sick. Never have a weekend off. Never be able to sit down on a 16 hour shift? Work injured, work hurt, work sick, work without days off. Work every night. Every weekend. Work all the time.

Did culinary school ever tell them that a craft is a verb, not a noun?

Did culinary school ever tell them that "Yes, Chef" is all the answer our superiors should hear when they've made a correction on our work, on our attitude, on our appearance, on our plates, on our work ethic?

"You're not doing these kids a favor by coddling them. You're crippling them."

I know you think I hate culinary schools. Perhaps you think that deep within me I wish I had been able to go-- to have been able to afford to go. You'd be right on all accounts.

I don't hate culinary school or graduates of culinary students as a rule.

I despise the privilege. I despise the cooks waiting for a formal invitation to learn, to grow, to challenge themselves, to do for their fellow cooks and chefs something outside their own eyesight.

I detest the attitude shift. Wave after wave of culinary students graduate every few weeks in America and where are they? Why aren't they applying for restaurants with whole animal programs? Why can't they last more than a few weeks in a bakery? How come they don't know basic information about seasonal produce, or better yet: how not to waste food?!

I think culinary schools are somehow teaching their students that all they have to do to get an education is to pay for it. And that once they start getting paid themselves, education will just arrive on a conveyor belt and they won't have to work for it or stoop down to pick it up or wait patiently or do thousands of hours of repetitive tasks. They think that with that school certificate they will be the foreman before being the apprentice.

I've seen cooks fired for shrugging their shoulders and blaming their commis, their prep staff, even their sous chefs, for their fucked up mis en place. When did personal responsibility become a thing of the past? If it's "always someone else's fault," when will you challenge yourself to become better, cleaner, faster?

In New York City most line cooks walk into a line that is fully prepped for them. They do not butcher their own protein, they do not peel their own fava beans, they do not wash their own stoves, they do not wash their own tools, they show up at their call time and punch out and drink a staff drink and

if they think that the chefs and sous chefs and prep cooks

who do all that prep for them, every day, who know

how to butcher, how to make charcuterie, how to bake bread, how to cure a ham or make marmalade or roll out a really tender pate brisee, how to prep their own fucking station-- from start to finish,

are going are to

invite

them to learn,

they are in for a big surprise. Because no fucking invitation will be written for them.

And the craft will be diluted

by those who think the fast track is a school an education few people can afford.

Kelly Choi, Shuna Lydon, Peels Spicy Ginger Cake & Pastrylandia on TV, NYC

It's not every day someone famous calls you up and asks you if you'll be on TV with them to talk about one of  your favorite recipes.

For this I, and my nervous system, are eternally grateful.

It was great fun, don't get me wrong, once the lights were on and my sharp, beautiful, smart, funny, adept gracious director, Kelly Choi, was telling me what to do and getting me to talk about food and spices and why gingerbread and ginger cake should be spicy, not flat, all was well in the world. We even really baked one together! And really ate it! Not just on TV.

And not just any TV, but on the little televisions now in every New York City yellow cab. On Thanksgiving.

If you watch it yourself you'll also get to have a peek into Pastrylandia! It's my pet name for my not-so-diminuitive pastry/bakery station/production area below sea level on Joey Ramone place and 2nd street, on the Bowery: home of Peels, my new home.

 

 

Memorializing the Living. or, celebrating people before they're dead.

For a few years now I've had an idea. I've thought about how terrible it is for the dead to miss their own obituaries. I've often wondered if a person's quality of life might be bettered if she/he knew how appreciated they were. I've had the idea to memorialize the living, not merely the deceased.

I've seen newspaper writers vie to be the ones who set down those words describing those lives as past tense. And I've witnessed thin, hungry and absent obituaries. Unattended memorials. Wordless friends, affection starved grief. 

I've read final books, written in someone's last years, and memoirs written in what we call someone's mid-life. We're really lucky if people we love and admire set down words, create art and leave us with something to hear them by, after they die. But it doesn't mean we should wait until they're gone to celebrate them, and what they mean to us, while they are still alive and meandering, imperfectly along, weaving in, like knitted yarn, through their lives and ours.

It can really embarass someone to tell them how much you appreciate their presence in your life. I have friends and colleagues for whom these words would make their skin crawl with disgust. I work for and with and have working for me, people for whom words like this would make them run screaming.

The person who thinks they are the best is the same narcissist who thinks they are the worst.

Some of us are very hard on ourselves. And positive or negative words from those we admire feel the same: like a lie.

I used to work with someone who would have never let you finish a sentence of sappyness. Macho. Or macha, as sex-specific romance language goes. Compliments and criticisms went to the same place with her: on the floor. She wasn't having any of it. Just get the work done. And have a drink after work. Or six. But then one morning, on a day everyone in my generation will remember, she died. Destroyed, evaporated, murdered. Few words left behind. To write any felt impossibly difficult and necessary both.

The difficult and the necessary.

What eggbeater is about. As you know, I sometimes say what no one wants to hear. I sometimes speak for those who can not. I hope to speak from the heart of my industry. {all is fair in love & war} I write words free of sponsored agenda. I work inside real kitchens with real people and real issues, personal and political, domestic and international, human and historical.

I want my idea to become real. I'm going to start writing Living Memorials.

Some of them might be formal, some of them all-inclusive, some of people you have already heard of, some I'm sure don't even know who I am, some of people I've known my whole life.

They will be about people whose lives I find wondrous, complicated, inspiring, joyful, radical, humble, tough, sharp, mysterious, generous, sexy, intense, quixotic, adventurous, frightening, enviable, quiet, colorful and more or less, depending on how you see and experience them yourself.

And I would like you to join me.

If you take up space online, please consider this an open invitation to write a Living Meme too.

There are no rules, none that I'm going to make, at any rate. I just want to see more celebratory words set down about people who are alive and actively living, doing, being. Foibles and all.

Pie Off Winter X Games 2010, Bay Area, CA

you might remember when I was a Pielebrity, aka a Pie Contest Judge for this fantastic fellow in 2008... Just in case you can make it to 2010~

friends,

in these final weeks of fine-tuning our recipes for the upcoming gala, it becomes necessary that we review some of the basic event parameters.  in so doing, we provide competitors and spectators alike the appropriate amount of time to compose complaint letters, construct picket signs and so on. 

as many of you know already, pie off adheres to a strict discipline of rules and regulations.  we are nothing as a pie society if not civilized.  and we gladly accept the rigid guidelines that govern us.  for example, we understand that pies are made in a round pie plate, at least nine inches in diameter.  we too recognize that pies, by definition, have a bottom homemade crust.

these are not matters for debate.  as a civilized pie society, we revel in the celebration of a well-crafted, baked good.  what is subject for reflection and clarification this year is the appropriate ingredients for pie filling.  a bedrock principle of pie offs past has been fruit-based dessert pies only.  no exceptions.  ohhhhh, many a baker has fallen prey to these strictures in years past.  wielders of rhubarb, chocolate, and sweet potato alike have all met the swift, uncompromising hand of disqualification.

but friends, it is a new day.  and with the advent of pie off 2010 - winter x games we have reached a watershed moment in the event's evolution.  and so, it is not without some reluctance that i announce, on behalf of the pie off steering committee, and its intercontinental advisory board, that this year, ALL manner of dessert pies may enter the pie off hall of champions.

...as you may imagine, the writing of this email has been as exhausting and boring as i am sure the reading of it has been.  so i retire now to the kitchen, where many variations of crust and filling await my consideration.  in time, more event details shall be revealed -- time, place, entry fee, security measures.  but for now, we must rest.  and plan.

and dream.


dr. rainbow (for the pie off steering committee, p.o.s.c.)

pie off winter x games
december 4, 2010
bay area

~

Dear Pie Off Community,

 Our chairperson Dr. Rainbow has asked us to release this year’s RFJ – Request for Judges.  If you or someone you know would like to judge Pie Off Winter X Games, please take a moment to complete our brief Pie Judge Personality Inventory.  Rate your answers on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree).

 A Pie Off Steering Committee representative will be in touch with you regarding your answers. Thank you.

 

THE PIE OFF CORPORATION

Division of Pie Engineering

Personality Inventory

 

1. I have often had a friendly relationship with pie.

2. I like to read pie cookbooks.

3. Sometimes I dream about filling.

4. I believe I was a rolling pin in a past life.

5. My stomach hurts.

6. Cake makes me nervous.

7. I once ate an entire pie by myself.

8. Store-bought crust is delicious.

9. Sometimes strange men follow me.

10. I have never made a pie.

~ THE GATA

for cooks only; an unapology.

i don't know what inspires you
i don't know who inspires you
i don't know why you continue to get up in the morning
i don't know why you do what you do
i don't know why i didn't die before i turned 30
i should have
that was the direction i was heading
fast
furious

i don't know
and you don't either.
you can't
because it's not ours to know
maybe we can guess
but it really doesn't fucking matter
because all you have is now.
and what is your now?
is life happening to you
or are you in it?

you might be wondering, what is my fucking point here?
I better make it soon because you were just demolished by service and your kitchen was too damn hot tonight and the dishwasher broke in the middle of service and the most expensive protein in the walk in went off and the cream delivery never came in and no one noticed and you're starting with a longer 86 list tomorrow than your prep list
and
and and and.

i don't know what inspires you.
but i hope you know.
at least some of the time
because
it's so important
to know why we do what we do
but I'm not talking about some intellectual bullshit
that's not what you're going to be able to lean into
when you're so tired you can't remember how you got home
even though you aren't drunk or high
and perhaps haven't been
for some time.
a lot of time, even.

i hope you know what inspires, what motivates you, to go on
because you are going to fucking need it.
need it like a vein needs to be tied.
need it like a baby needs to be fed
need it like a dog needs direction
need.
i kid you not, yo.
because when you get home and the voices start
you will need to know why
because when your family or your friends or your partner or your community
call
and call out your name
and call you out
you are going to need to know

why

even if it makes no fucking sense
even if it seems absurd
even if it's absolutely crazy.

it's ok to love it and be passionate but
fire burns bright
and it burns out
and is indiscriminate
in who it burns
along the way.

i wish you a long, slow journey.
i wish you an intentional journey.
i wish for you the strength it takes to make an unapology
to be the kind of selfish that not all the bad kind.
i wish for you humility.
i wish for you a mentor, a teacher.
i wish for you to uncover learning and epiphanies and loyalties
where you least fucking expect it.

this profession takes heart.

serious.

so,
i don't know what inspires you
i don't know who inspires you
i don't know why you continue to get up in the morning
i don't know why you do what you do

but i hope you take some time to think about it

because you will be tested
your heart and your body and your psyche and your original book
and your mind
and your goals
and your ego
will be tested
and you will be slammed up against a wall
over and over and over and over
and you will be challenged
to assess and reassess and
i wish for you

clarity.

i wish for you at least one person in your life
who you know loves you no matter what
mistakes you make
and that you trust that person enough to listen to everything they have to say
even if you're so uncomfortable that you want to zip off your skin and run away forever
because you're going to need people to lean into
when you barely know yourself anymore.
you're going to need to be reminded
why.

the glamorous life of a chef. part one.

no sleep. well, no deep sleep. few dreams. mostly passing out. trying not to fall asleep on the commute  home.

never time to eat. never have time to sit and eat. no utensils to eat with. no plates, just plastic containers. on the fly. on the run. a taste here and a swallow of something substantial almost never. disparate food groups go into the mouth at odd times of the day. example:

6 am: salt cod brandade.
6:04 am: vanilla ice cream base.
6:30 am: just blanched leeks.
7 am: a carrot's stem end.
7:32 am: hot chocolate chip cookie. burn tongue.
9 am: overcooked scrambled eggs, cold {?staff meal}. 7 pm: [yes, that's right---> you eat nothing from 9 am until 7 pm.] a few cilantro leaves and a stolen celery heart.
8:19 pm: one spoon of searingly hot soup. burn tongue again.
10:16 pm: four and a half bites of cold rice, cold mystery meat, soggy limp salad. {yes, another staff meal taken in a deli cup but not eaten when hot.} 
2 am: you get home and realize you have nothing to eat in the house but you're starving so you eat crackers or instant ramen or have a beer or go to sleep hungry.

lonely. spend your days nagging cooks. harp on every last detail of everyone's work. fix the dishwasher on a Saturday night. stay until 5 am pulling apart the ceiling to find a leak. bake all night because one of your bakers is out sick. yell at people for being lazy and get disrespected in evry which way but the eighth day of the week. work the craziest fucking hours anyone sane or even insane enough to hang out with, would. try your luck on the desperate alcoholics at the bar, and everyone is wondering what the mangey dog brought in. go home to a dirty apartment and sit in the dark but for the glow of secret internet meanderings. being a boss means everyone wants to be you, but few want to be with you. and you don't have the time, even if they did. most of your [old] friends have 'normal' 'civilian' lives. and if they don't eat where you work, you never see them either.

nerdy. and not in the ironic sense. your entire life revolves around the kitchen. insular. your humour, your manner, your thoughts, your viewpoints, all revolve around your kitchen, your crew, your menu, your food, your next menu, your bar sales, your craft, your purveyors, your wine rep, your tableware, your shortcomings, your youness as it relates to you. you're so self referential to your own square footage you can barely remember when you thought about anything else. people might meet you out and exclaim, "O! YOU'RE A CHEF?! R E A L L YYYY?!!! WOW. THAT'S SOOOO COOL! What a cool job!!!" And you wish you'd never said anything at all because now, on your one night off in 6 weeks, you could have heard something other than what usually comes out of your mouth, you hear yourself leave your body and talk about your kitchen, your food, your menu, your press, your staff, your you you you and more you, and even though you are watching yourself kill this innocent little Top Chef watching devotee with the real deal, the real chef's life, the real hours, the real scars, the real fucking deal, yo,    from the other side of the room, or worse yet, from the ceiling like a Greek God, you can't help it. it all spills out. you talk about the seeds your favorite farmer collects and the whole lamb you broke down this afternoon and the cook you had to send to the hospital before service because he took off the side of his pinky on a mandolin. YOU CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT YOUR OWN LITTLE WORLD. even though now even the out-of-body you is yawning with minutae obsessed nerdiness and morbid cook humor no one but you and your world gets, you kill, you kill dead the person who could have talked TO you about something else. something, anyfuckingthing that might have actually given you THE NIGHT OFF. yeah, that one you're not gonna see until February. It's November.

bad friend. bad father. bad uncle. bad girlfriend. bad son. bad community lover. bad husband. bad mother. bad dog owner. bad roommate. bad citizen. have you ever dated a chef? we fucking suck. we're tired all the time. we stink. we never write, we never call, we never go to weddings or funerals or births. we don't have days off and we don't dare try and take them. we don't go to the doctor when we're sick. we don't take the best care of ourselves. we pay our bills late and we have trouble keeping up with our laundry. we do not respond to jury duty notices. we never see the light of day and we like to sleep on any days off we weasel out of our kitchens. we think and talk kitchen food staffing issues lists menus produce protein production ceaselessly. we don't show up on time. we don't know how to eat with utensils. we don't get holidays off, we work them, so don't ask. we're defensive, on edge, drunk a lot of the time, and we flirt with waiters. it's as bad as a dog liking a cat, but we do it. we cheat on our partners and we don't get home in time to tuck our kids in. we don't answer emails and we don't write full sentences if we manage to write at all. we don't answer the phone and if we call we wake you up because in our world the clock stops when we enter our little kitchen world. years can go by and we have no idea what's happening in the world outside our world. we are like jailed narcissists. mirrors on all sides.

sticky, stinky, bruised and burned. you often look like garbage the bridge and tunnel tourists of your town leave in your gutters as they make their way back to their pristine suburban fake lives. people avoid  you walking down the street even if they've begged your host to let them eat your food just minutes before. you've been wearing the same clothes for the last 17 hours and you smell of smoke, blood, oil and onions. you get home to find chocolate and beet juice on your forehead and you wonder why no one thought to tell you to wipe it off while they cooked alongside you for the last 15 hours. your scars tell their own bar stool stories. you caught the biggest fish, fucked the prettiest girl and reached into the oven a hundred times that night with a wet towel because the kitchen ran out of linens in the middle of service. you're burned and bloody and barely patched with band aids that aren't built for hard labor.